After the end of the Cold War and the advent of the Information Age, modern warfare strategies no longer focus on merely inflicting damage upon a particular enemy, but rather emphasize capabilities to shape behaviors of friends, foes and neutrals in peace, crisis and war settings. Whereas previous strategies generally focused upon countering defined combat threats, modern “effects based” operations provide a broad range of options for responding to a variety of challenges. Effects based operations (EBO) typically rely heavily upon the ability of combatants and strategists to rapidly share information about battlefield conditions, command intent and the like. Lethality, survivability and responsiveness are all improved through rapid information sharing and improved situation awareness, thereby resulting in increased combat power. Similar benefits may be achieved from improving system reliability in other settings, such as in the home, workplace, community or the like.
Effects-based operations benefit greatly from the ability of geographically separated entities to quickly and efficiently share information, to collaborate on tasks, and to synchronize actions in a network-centric environment. In particular, network-centric (i.e. information based) operations (NCO) benefit from flexible coordination of available resources to form dynamic, ad-hoc networks suitable for a particular mission or operation. It may be desirable, for example, for a soldier operating on a battlefield to obtain real-time photographs or other data from a satellite or aircraft passing overhead during an operation. Such timely and accurate data may greatly reduce the risks and increase the effectiveness of the soldier's operation, yet this information may not always be reliably available due to communications incompatibilities between various battlefield systems.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has attempted to improve the level of compatibility between various inter-communicating systems by promulgating standards such as information exchange requirements (IERs). Indeed, the DoD has stated in its Joint Vision 2020 (“JV2020”) plan that all services and platforms operated by the DoD will globally interoperate by the year 2020. Achieving global and seamless interoperability for existing (i.e. “legacy”) systems, in particular, can create difficulty as the various legacy systems are extended beyond the capabilities for which they were originally designed. The DoD has therefore set forth information exchange requirements to define the requirements for information passed electronically between and among forces, organizations, or administrative structures in the defense setting. The IERs typically define the quality (e.g. frequency, timeliness, security, etc.) and quantity (e.g. volume, speed, type, format, etc.) of data transferred between DoD systems. Compliance with information exchange requirements is mandatory for equipment for all DoD systems, and compliance with each relevant IER is verified before new equipment is added to the DoD inventory.
Difficulties arise, however, in that the IERs promulgated by the DoD are typically highly context specific, and very rigidly defined. That is, the IERs typically define a single specific type of data transfer in great inflexible detail. Each IER typically lumps link information, information assurance and application requirements parameters into a single structure. As a result, each different type of data transfer (e.g. transfers between different types of communications nodes, different types of data, different bit or frame rates, different data definitions, etc.) is typically represented by a separate IER. A single data transfer to multiple recipients, for example, typically requires a separate IER for each recipient type. If the data may be provided in multiple formats, each format typically requires its own IER, thereby multiplying the number of IER requirements by the number of supported data formats. If the transfers are allowed to take place over various channels having different data rates (e.g. P data rates), for example, each data rate typically has its own IER, again multiplying the number of IER requirements by the number of supported data rates. Consequently, true compliance with DoD specifications may require support for dozens, hundreds or even thousands of separate IERs. As additional node types, systems and capabilities are added to the DoD inventory, the number of IERs increases rapidly, and managing these IERs can present significant cost and management burdens. Moreover, the data processing resources consumed by maintaining large collections of separate IERs can be significant, thereby hindering or reducing the capabilities of the various inter-communicating components and systems.
It is therefore highly desirable to create a technique for managing the spiraling number of IERs for various components. It is also desirable to create systems and methods for aggregating the IERs into a smaller, more manageable format. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.